Life without tone controls ... it sucks!

Great point. I think some of the reasons for not using tone controls are valid, but not as important as the reasons to use them occasionally.
Ive never noticed phase shifts, or noise from tone controls "While" listening to music, even though I understand the why of the extra amp section and all, I find it noticable more in theory.

 

I couldn't live without tone controls. Sure, you can say "I'm a purist, I never use them. I seek out well mastered recordings..." Great, then you can listen to Patrica Barber and the Casino Royale soundstrack and Pet Sounds ad infinitum. Zzzzzzzzzzz.

Most of these great, well mastered audiophile recordings sound great why? Because someone was fiddling with their sound along the way. They could say they never goosed the sound, but they ran it through a syrupy tube amp, some half foot thick cables and an extremely rare Dutch World War II preamp that happens to roll off .5 db at 3-7khz even though it has no tone controls - still, the audiophile can say "I leave it flat only!" Baloney.

Everything in your chain - from your needle to your speakers - is affecting how that recording is played back. Sure, "it's left flat" because you've just spent 20 year collecting equipment that tailors the sound to your ears.

No one's hearing is the same. If your brother shooting off his shotgun near you 18 years ago left a notch in your hearing, you might not even know it. But for some reason Conrad Johnson equipment sounds "just right" to you - because it fills in that gap in your hearing to balance out the recording the way it was eq'd by the engineer.

Oh, yes, Tone Controls. I use them. I have my preamp's bass and treble set way off the mark of "ZERO." And quess what, they stay at those marks all the time. While playing ALL of my recordings. Once set, based on listening to a variety of music and deciding those dreaded tone control tweaks were the way the system needed to be tailored, they havent moved since. Now, am I fiddling with each individual recording, not hearing it as it was "meant to be"? Or did I correct my system, within my listening room, to my hearing? Not kosher. Phfffft.

 

Me neither. If I had them, I would defeat them.

 

Tone controls are the Devils spawn...

Unless you can afford a delicious parametric device to surgically use on your audio patient

Remember subtractions only.

 

I'll go out on a limb here & suggest you use the Mac preamp that you find so enjoyable to listen to. After all, are you more concerned with listening to advice & opinion from others, or to the music that you want? For the record, I don't have tone controls on my preamp.

 

"the better is the enemy of the good" is more accurate

 

And, in the spirit of my last rant, I publically challenge the staff of STEREOPHILE (Fremer, Atkins, the lot) to go to the same audiologist and post their hearing test results each year in the magazine (like the rest of us, they're not getting any younger). That way, we can see if they all have the perfect golden ears they make out to have. It will point out which editors have deficiencies in what areas so we can rate their assements based on the flaws in their hearing. What, Fremer has a 2bd notch at 9khz? Hmm, better avoid his choices in tweeters.... Atkins' has developed a dip in his hearing between 30 and 100khz? Rethink his views on that midrange...

 

How good your ears are doesn't necessarily correlate to what you hear. IMO it's more a matter of ear training than anything else.

I hear things most others don't and I don't necessarily think it's because my hearing is better.

 

My preamp has bass and treble controls that can be switched out of the loop. I keep them switched off at all times. But just knowing they are there helps me sleep at night.

 

Why do I feel guilty liking a little treble boost now and then?

 

Except, of course, when you want to add something. In that case, ADD.

 

Whenever I hop in a rental car, I know immediately if the last user was dialing up the bass or treble. I always flatten it out.

 

Hopefully one has a gain control to compensate.

 

Try not to feel guilty, IMO.

I am 100% sure everyone's physical hearing system is different from everyone else's, so it makes sense one man's "good" can easily be another man's "Sheesh cut the treble on that thing!"

Well Wikipedia said my version was a variant, and The Wiki is never wrong.

 

I love tone controls!

Those knobs are essential for my enjoyment

Surely for great recordings I leave all them in "0" (that's flat) but when I first changed speakers many years ago they were somewhat bass why and with mid range less forward, so the bass and loudness knobs did the job

I couldn't care less about "authenticity" and all that, because as soon I change one thing on my system (CD, receiver, cables, speakers) the sound change. So which is the "authentic" sound, the previous one or the new one. And so on, so I don't care about "purism".

Enjoying music for me come first

 

Alberto, sorry to hear of your challenges. What audio stores did you visit that had fully treated rooms? I live in your area so I'm curious to hear about them.

 

That's the first thing I do - before I leave the lot.

 

How can that be true? If you've lost the ability to hear certain frequencies simply form aging, or you've lost it because of being subjected to loud noise over the years, you simply can't hear them no matter how "well trained" you think you are.
You can't impose your will to hear those frequencies, audiophile or not.

 

yeah I have a couple of pres (one of them's also a Mac) that have tone controls but I leave them flat - I haven't used tone controls for ages, if ever. Maybe never.

-s

 

Hi,
I know what you mean but I have to agree with what you were saying earlier about different people hearing differently. It might be as much that they listen differently rather than hear differently but it's hard to get into someone else's aural cortex.

What bothers you most is the tonal balance, yet what bothers me most are odd distortions. I can live without deep bass or live with it. Even when I know it's missing from a particular recording due to my listening on a small set of monitors, it just doesn't bother me so much. Yeah. I enjoy it when it is correct on a full-range set, but I can't really enjoy a poorly implemented sub as much as just doing without the bottom octaves most days. For me, the addition of noise and a strange transient response, attack and decay not being smooth for instance, bothers me more than a slight up-tilt in HF or whatever.

Maybe it's from listening to vinyl for so many years, I don't know. I can "listen through" ticks and pops on Lps and yet I can't enjoy the same tracks on CD as much even though the overlaid noises are non-existent on the CD. Jitter and some less prominent but unnatural additions do seem to irritate me most. It's not just the noise issue of the tone controls although they certainly do add it. It is a loss of dynamics as well in some systems. It just takes me farther away from the original.
-Bill

 

Haven't used them in many years. If I have any they are on Zero.

 

Haven't had them for the last 15 years - don't need them either.

 

..... Well said Steve. That's also my listening philosophy. And it opens up the ears to a wide variety of tonal landscapes.

If I start trying to second guess the EQ I can quickly lose the enjoyment of the music.

 

great post Bill

 

He didn't say that the subject had "lost the ability to hear certain frequencies" but rather that theirs ears may not be perfect or that they may just hear in a different way than others. No one can claim to have perfect hearing as it's all relative to what we consider to be a standard of "acceptable" or "average". Let's say for the sake of the theory here that the subject is just down 3db form whatever the test standards are for an average listener. If the subject is a more well trained listener than another, they still may be able to correctly identify irregularities in a recording more consistently than an untrained listener. The brain is complex enough to allow this, it can "fill-in" sounds that are not quite heard as distinctly from memory of what things "should" sound like.

You wouldn't fail to recognize your daughter's voice simply because you had a slight hearing loss at certain frequencies for instance. Now, if you are only saying that someone cannot hear things above 16khz if they have lost all hearing above 15khz, well then no kidding. That still doesn't prevent a trained listener from being able to more accurately hear frequencies below that. One of the funniest things that I hear when someone comes in to buy something and doesn't want to listen so much but just talk prices on speakers for instance, is that they'll say "I can't hear anything above X-khz anyway" or "My hearing is so bad that it'd be wasted on me". They are not actually incapable of hearing the difference between two different loudspeaker designs; they just don't want to spend any money. Even old guys in their 70s can hear the difference if they just sit down and listen and you know they probably can't hear anything above 15khz. They can hear most everything else and even though the levels may be lower and the response more ragged, they can also hear things such as dynamic range, LF extension, and distortion, even if they don't know what to call them. Likewise, they can hear the difference between a tube amp and a SS amp.
-Bill